Becker & Poliakoff

condo

Owners Can Record Meetings; Free Speech Rights Unclear

Q: I recently agreed to serve on the board of my condominium association. There is one owner who comes to many of the board meetings and sits in the front row with his phone device pointed at the head table. I assume he is recording the meetings, which I understand he has the right to do. My question is whether there are any limits on what this person can do with his recordings. For example, can he take photographs of me or other board members and post them on social media type sites? (J.L; via e-mail)

Lee County Wants To Speed Up Hurricane Cleanup

Q: Lee County has information for homeowners’ association leaders. Professional property managers and residential community associations can now take steps to protect their communities in the event of a hurricane or other declared major disaster in Lee County.

FEMA regulations require that private or gated communities have a current Right of Entry and Indemnification form on file with Lee County before any disaster debris recovery crews are allowed to entry into the community. The Right of Entry would only be used as necessary during the recovery period following a declared state of local emergency. Lee County now offers a simplified process to submit the paperwork. The form is located at: http://leegis.leegov.com/ROE. This form needs to be filled out only once a year.

Lee County Solid Waste encourages communities located in unincorporated Lee County, Bonita Springs (unincorporated areas of Bonita outside city limits only), and the Village of Estero to complete this process. (Betsy Clayton, Lee County Director of Communications)

Agency Revisits Term Limit Issue

In 2017, the Florida Legislature passed a law which stated that condominium directors could not serve more than 4 consecutive 2-year terms, essentially creating an 8-year term limit.

The obvious immediate question was whether this law would be applied retroactively (reach back to prior years of service to determine if a director was “termed out”) or whether the law would only be applied prospectively (meaning that you would not count previous terms in calculating the 8 year term limit). The law itself did not say one way or the other whether it was intended to be retroactive.